Annie Duke gets “Dirty with Midgets”

Poker News Daily: Talk about the double firing at the end of Sunday’s episode of Celebrity Apprentice. TLC singer Tionne Watkins was dismissed after she volunteered to come back to the board room and reality star Khloe Kardashian was fired for missing time on Celebrity Apprentice due to a DUI charge.

Duke: I was kind of surprised. I knew that there might be an issue when Melissa Rivers asked for volunteers. Notice that I didn’t volunteer. I was surprised that we lost the task. I was surprised that Tionne went home, but I was even more surprised that both teams lost the task.

PND: Talk about what went through your head when you learned that both teams had lost the task.

Duke: Trump made it clear right away that Perez Hilton loved our video. He was also clear that Perez hated Kotu’s. When they played the videos in the boardroom, everyone was laughing at ours. I didn’t even understand Kotu’s. I didn’t get the joke that it was about masturbation. How would we not think we had won? When it turned out that we had both lost, I realized that the executives asked for a viral video, but they really wanted a commercial. The key to understanding our mistake was that both teams came up with midgets.

PND: In the preview for this week’s episode, you get into a spat with talk show host Joan Rivers. What can you tell us about it?

Duke: Joan apparently said that I would spit on the ground and drown my own mother. I can assure you that I do nothing to deserve that comment. Whatever you might say about me being direct, I don’t screw people over.

I’m kind of ambivalent about it. On the one hand, what she says is so beyond the norm and I’m not sure it deserves a response. It’s a level of comment that you don’t need to respond to. On the other hand, it’s also not fun to hear it. When people ask me if I liked doing Celebrity Apprentice, I say yes, I enjoyed almost everything about the show. I enjoyed the people I worked with and the majority of the tasks. However, I had some things said to me by Joan that no one should have to hear.

PND: In the boardroom, were the lines of personal versus business crossed between Clint Black and Joan Rivers and between Donald Trump and Khloe Kardashian?

Duke: When I found out that Clint cut Joan out of the process, I thought it was bad judgment on Clint’s part. Joan took it very personally in the boardroom and I felt like she stepped over the line. She got extremely personal with Clint and none of her criticisms were about him as a Project Manager. Instead, they were about him as a man.

Everyone on the task was shocked. There was no one else to fire but Clint, who had not only locked his team out of the creative process, but physically locked his team out of the editing room. Obviously, there isn’t anyone else to fire. To Clint’s credit, he said that. Whatever you want to say about Clint, he did the right thing. He took full responsibility for the project and assumed full responsibility for its failure. Trump commended him for that. Khloe missed most of a past task because she was doing one of her classes. I don’t understand what that has to do with Clint locking his team out of the editing room.

PND: You had said that All Small and Mighty’s brand managers were looking for a commercial instead of a viral video. Can you explain that further?

Duke: On Celebrity Apprentice, you have people who are really smart and in the case of Jesse James, one of the best marketers out there. Everyone came up with the same idea: midgets. The one thing that the executives praised was the branding. I was in charge of it for my team. They said that Athena really understood the brand. We had “3X” flash really big on the screen, had three midgets, and Jesse said every brand message. I knew that at some point during the season, two people would have to get fired in the boardroom. The number of weeks compared to the number of people didn’t add up.